How Monster.com Equated Its Brand with Jobs Through a Solid Content Strategy

Margaret Magnarelli started her Brand Innovators talk by saying, “it’s a great time to be in Marketing.”

The VP Marketing at Monster.com, however, warned the audience of the flip side; what she calls “generalized content anxiety syndrome,” or the pressure marketers feel from themselves as well as from other corporate stakeholders to create engaging brand content across all platforms.

Add to that the various content and audiences types, and the picture gets even more complicated. For brands such as Monster.com, which serves both B2B and B2C audiences, developing a content strategy gets even more challenging. “How do we create content for all these groups when technology moves at the speed of life, but the creative process doesn’t?”

Magnarelli: “How do we create content for all these groups when technology moves at the speed of life, but the creative process doesn’t?”

As executive editor at Money magazine, Magnarelli helped launch Money.com in 2014, before joining Monster. The experience impacted her understanding of “how important distribution is in the content creation process.” And so, upon joining Monster in 2015, she devised a new content marketing strategy that simplified what content should be created while emphasizing multi-channel distribution.

Magnarelli’s team borrowed from the Ancient Greek rhetoric of Aristotle to create an editorial strategy based on persuasion via emotional appeal. Ethos (authority), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic) helped the Monster.com team make its process more fluid, productive and efficient. “There are many channels but only three types of stories that do each of those things.”

Magnarelli explained how ethos, pathos, and logos evolved into her strategy’s “How, Now & Wow,” with How being content that educates, provides advice and establishes the brand, while Now is news, trends and data-driven content that keeps the brand current and relevant. Wow, on the other hand, is content created to entertain, delight or inspire.

“As a brand, you’ve done a fantastic job at equating Monster.com with jobs, where did you, as a brand marketer, begin this journey,” asked WHOSAY CMO Paul Kontonis who joined Magnarelli on-stage for an in-depth discussion.

Magnarelli and Kontonis at Brand Innovators New York at BuzzFeed

“It all starts with your goals,” responded Magnarelli, adding that, at Monster.com, from a B2C standpoint, they wanted people to know that “we have the jobs.” “It always starts with what are you trying to accomplish, your vision and values.”

Kontonis then addressed the measurement issue by asking Magnarelli for her go-to data. She explained that she is focused on engagement and from a marketing funnel perspective, wants people to go to the website primarily. “I want to bring visitors to the site because I want content to build up audiences and awareness of the brand,” she explained.

However, how to do it when trying to engage both B2C and B2B audiences? That was Kontonis’ next question for Magnarelli. “We have a concise buyer’s journey on the B2C side,” she explained, adding that her consumer goal is to have people become a member of the site and or apply for jobs. “On the B2B side, we have a much longer buyer’s journey. In that case, we want to get people into more premium content to drive their purchase decisions.”

Lastly, Magnarelli channeled the thoughts of many marketers by stating that B2B content doesn’t have to be boring. “You still need to have fun, interesting content that speaks to your brand’s values,” she explained. After all, just as with B2C you’re ultimately talking to another human. And since you’re talking to them about work, you’ll get a lot more traction if you can make it feel like it’s not added work to consume."